March 25, 2011

GOP's Radical Breakage Continues

[...] In 1991, Cronon completed a book entitled Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, which examines Chicago 's relationship to its rural hinterland during the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1991, it was awarded the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for the best literary work of non-fiction published during the preceding year; in 1992, it won the Bancroft Prize for the best work of American history published during the previous year, and was also one of three nominees for the Pulitzer Prize in History; and in 1993, it received the George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History and the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award from the Forest History Society for the best book of environmental and conservation history published during the preceding two years.

[...]

In July 1992, Cronon became the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin ­Madison after having served for more than a decade as a member of the Yale History Department. In 2003, he was also named Vilas [pronounced "Vy-lus"] Research Professor at UW-Madison, the university’s most distinguished chaired professorship.

Cronon has been President of the American Society for Environmental History, and serves as general editor of the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Series for the University of Washington Press. [...] He has served on the Governing Council of The Wilderness Society since 1995, and on the National Board of the Trust for Public Land since 2003. He has been elected President of the American Historical Association for 2011-12.

Born September 11, 1954, in New Haven , Connecticut, Cronon received his B.A. (1976) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He holds an M.A. (1979), M.Phil. (1980), and Ph.D. (1990) from Yale, and a D.Phil. (1981) from Oxford University. Cronon has been a Rhodes Scholar, Danforth Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, and MacArthur Fellow; has won prizes for his teaching at both Yale and Wisconsin; in 1999 was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society' and in 2006 was elected a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin has made an open records request for the e-mails of a University of Wisconsin professor of history, geography and environmental studies in an apparent response to a blog post the professor wrote about a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Professor William J. Cronon, who is the president-elect of the American Historical Association, said in an interview Friday that the party asked for e-mails starting Jan. 1.

Most of the names are Republican legislators. Marty Beil is the head of the Wisconsin State Employees Union and Mary Bell is the head of the Wisconsin Education Association Council.

Cronon said the university had not yet complied with the open records request. The e-mails would be subject to the state's open records law because they were written on an university e-mail account.

The university has an e-mail policy that states, "University employees may not use these resources to support the nomination of any person for political office or to influence a vote in any election or referendum.”

Cronon said he did not violate the policy in any way. "I really object in principle to this inquiry," Cronon said of the party's open records request.

Thompson was not available for comment. But in an statement, Mark Jefferson, the party's executive director, said, "Like anyone else who makes an open records request in Wisconsin, the Republican Party of Wisconsin does not have to give a reason for doing so. [...]"

NOW that a Wisconsin judge has temporarily blocked a state law that would strip public employee unions of most collective bargaining rights, it’s worth stepping back to place these events in larger historical context.

Republicans in Wisconsin are seeking to reverse civic traditions that for more than a century have been among the most celebrated achievements not just of their state, but of their own party as well.

Wisconsin was at the forefront of the progressive reform movement in the early 20th century, when the policies of Gov. Robert M. La Follette prompted a fellow Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, to call the state a “laboratory of democracy.” The state pioneered many social reforms: It was the first to introduce workers’ compensation, in 1911; unemployment insurance, in 1932; and public employee bargaining, in 1959.

University of Wisconsin professors helped design Social Security and were responsible for founding the union that eventually became the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Wisconsin reformers were equally active in promoting workplace safety, and often led the nation in natural resource conservation and environmental protection.

But while Americans are aware of this progressive tradition, they probably don’t know that many of the innovations on behalf of working people were at least as much the work of Republicans as of Democrats.

Although Wisconsin has a Democratic reputation these days — it backed the party’s presidential candidates in 2000, 2004 and 2008 — the state was dominated by Republicans for a full century after the Civil War. The Democratic Party was so ineffective that Wisconsin politics were largely conducted as debates between the progressive and conservative wings of the Republican Party.

When the Wisconsin Democratic Party finally revived itself in the 1950s, it did so in a context where members of both parties were unusually open to bipartisan policy approaches. Many of the new Democrats had in fact been progressive Republicans just a few years earlier, having left the party in revulsion against the reactionary politics of their own senator, Joseph R. McCarthy, and in sympathy with postwar liberalizing forces like the growing civil rights movement.

The demonizing of government at all levels that has become such a reflexive impulse for conservatives in the early 21st century would have mystified most elected officials in Wisconsin just a few decades ago.

When Gov. Gaylord A. Nelson, a Democrat, sought to extend collective bargaining rights to municipal workers in 1959, he did so in partnership with a Legislature in which one house was controlled by the Republicans. Both sides believed the normalization of labor-management relations would increase efficiency and avoid crippling strikes like those of the Milwaukee garbage collectors during the 1950s. Later, in 1967, when collective bargaining was extended to state workers for the same reasons, the reform was promoted by a Republican governor, Warren P. Knowles, with a Republican Legislature.

The policies that the current governor, Scott Walker, has sought to overturn, in other words, are legacies of his own party.

But Mr. Walker’s assault on collective bargaining rights breaks with Wisconsin history in two much deeper ways as well. Among the state’s proudest traditions is a passion for transparent government that often strikes outsiders as extreme. Its open meetings law, open records law and public comment procedures are among the strongest in the nation. Indeed, the basis for the restraining order blocking the collective bargaining law is that Republicans may have violated open meetings rules in passing it. The legislation they have enacted turns out to be radical not just in its content, but in its blunt ends-justify-the-means disregard for openness and transparency.

This in turn points to what is perhaps Mr. Walker’s greatest break from the political traditions of his state. Wisconsinites have long believed that common problems deserve common solutions, and that when something needs fixing, we should roll up our sleeves and work together — no matter what our politics — to achieve the common good.

[...] Perhaps that is why — as a centrist and a lifelong independent — I have found myself returning over the past few weeks to the question posed by the lawyer Joseph N. Welch during the hearings that finally helped bring down another Wisconsin Republican, Joe McCarthy, in 1954: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy. Their political convictions and the two moments in history are quite different. But there is something about the style of the two men — their aggressiveness, their self-certainty, their seeming indifference to contrary views — that may help explain the extreme partisan reactions they triggered. McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.

The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin’s citizens have not.

Executive Director of Wisconsin's Republican Party Mark Jefferson responded as I've written above, with a press release decrying:

“I have never seen such a concerted effort to intimidate someone from lawfully seeking information about their government.

“Further, it is chilling to see that so many members of the media would take up the cause of a professor who seeks to quash a lawful open records request. Taxpayers have a right to accountable government and a right to know if public officials are conducting themselves in an ethical manner. The Left is far more aggressive in this state than the Right in its use of open records requests, yet these rights do extend beyond the liberal left and members of the media.

“Finally, I find it appalling that Professor Cronin seems to have plenty of time to round up reporters from around the nation to push the Republican Party of Wisconsin into explaining its motives behind a lawful open records request, but has apparently not found time to provide any of the requested information.

“We look forward to the University’s prompt response to our request and hope those who seek to intimidate us from making such requests will reconsider their actions.”

[...] The obvious goal is to find something damaging or embarrassing to Cronon -- although judging by Cronon's account, smoking guns seem unlikely to be lying around in plain sight. (Eight of the names referenced in the request belong to the eight Republican state senators targeted by Democrats for recall.)

I can't do a better, more eloquent or more profound job of summarizing the issues at stake than Cronon himself does in a lengthy blog post that the professor posted Thursday night. Everyone should read it.

I don’t want this to become an endless professorial lecture on the general outlines of American conservatism today, so let me turn to the question at hand: who’s really behind recent Republican legislation in Wisconsin and elsewhere? I’m professionally interested in this question as a historian, and since I can’t bring myself to believe that the Koch brothers single-handedly masterminded all this, I’ve been trying to discover the deeper networks from which this legislation emerged.

Here’s my preliminary answer.

Telling Your State Legislators What to Do: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

The most important group, I’m pretty sure, is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which was founded in 1973 by Henry Hyde, Lou Barnett, and (surprise, surprise) Paul Weyrich. Its goal for the past forty years has been to draft “model bills” that conservative legislators can introduce in the 50 states. Its website claims that in each legislative cycle, its members introduce 1000 pieces of legislation based on its work, and claims that roughly 18% of these bills are enacted into law. (Among them was the controversial 2010 anti-immigrant law in Arizona.)

If you’re as impressed by these numbers as I am, I’m hoping you’ll agree with me that it may be time to start paying more attention to ALEC and the bills its seeks to promote.

First visit the “About” menu to get a sense of the organization’s history and its current members and funders. But the meat of the site is the “model legislation” page, which is the gateway to the hundreds of bills that ALEC has drafted for the benefit of its conservative members.http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Model_Legislation1

You’ll of course be eager to look these over…but you won’t be able to, because you’re not a member.

Becoming a Member of ALEC: Not So Easy to Do

How do you become a member? Simple. Two ways. You can be an elected Republican legislator who, after being individually vetted, pays a token fee of roughly $100 per biennium to join. Here’s the membership brochure to use if you meet this criterion:

What if you’re not a Republican elected official? Not to worry. You can apply to join ALEC as a “private sector” member by paying at least a few thousand dollars depending on which legislative domains most interest you. Here’s the membership brochure if you meet this criterion: http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/Corporate_Brochure.pdf

Then again, even if most of us had this kind of money to contribute to ALEC, I have a feeling that membership might not necessarily be open to just anyone who is willing to pay the fee. But maybe I’m being cynical here.

Which Wisconsin Republican politicians are members of ALEC? Good question. How would we know? ALEC doesn’t provide this information on its website unless you’re able to log in as a member. Maybe we need to ask our representatives. One might think that Republican legislators gathered at a national ALEC meeting could be sufficiently numerous to trigger the “walking quorum rule” that makes it illegal for public officials in Wisconsin to meet unannounced without public notice of their meeting. But they’re able to avoid this rule (which applies to every other public body in Wisconsin) because they’re protected by a loophole in what is otherwise one of the strictest open meetings laws in the nation. The Wisconsin legislature carved out a unique exemption from that law for its own party caucuses, Democrats and Republicans alike. So Wisconsin Republicans are able to hold secret meetings with ALEC to plan their legislative strategies whenever they want, safe in the knowledge that no one will be able to watch while they do so.

If it has seemed to you while watching recent debates in the legislature that many Republican members of the Senate and Assembly have already made up their minds about the bills on which they’re voting, and don’t have much interest in listening to arguments being made by anyone else in the room, it’s probably because they did in fact make up their minds about these bills long before they entered the Capitol chambers. You can decide for yourself whether that’s a good expression of the “sifting and winnowing” for which this state long ago became famous.

Partners in Wisconsin and Other States: SPN, MacIver Institute, WPRI

An important partner of ALEC’s, by the way, is the State Policy Network (SPN), which helps coordinate the activities of a wide variety of conservative think tanks operating at the state level throughout the country. See its home page at http://www.spn.org/

Many of the publications of these think tanks are accessible and downloadable from links on the SPN website, which are well worth taking the time to peruse and read. A good starting place is:http://www.spn.org/members/

Two important SPN members in Wisconsin are the MacIver Institute for Public Policy:

If you want to be a well-informed Wisconsin citizen and don’t know about their work, you’ll probably want to start visiting these sites more regularly. You’ll gain a much better understanding of the underlying ideas that inform recent Republican legislation by doing so.

Understanding What These Groups Do

As I said earlier, it’s not easy to find exact details about the model legislation that ALEC has sought to introduce all over the country in Republican-dominated statehouses. But you’ll get suggestive glimpses of it from the occasional reporting that has been done about ALEC over the past decade. Almost all of this emanates from the left wing of the political spectrum, so needs to be read with that bias always in mind.

Interestingly, one of the most critical accounts of ALEC’s activities was issued by Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council in a 2002 report entitled Corporate America’s Trojan Horse in the States. Although NRDC and Defenders may seem like odd organizations to issue such a report, some of ALEC’s most concentrated efforts have been directed at rolling back environmental protections, so their authorship of the report isn’t so surprising. The report and its associated press release are here:http://alecwatch.org/11223344.pdfhttp://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/020228.asp

For just one example of how below-the-radar the activities of ALEC typically are, look for where the name of the organization appears in this recent story from the New York Times about current efforts in state legislatures to roll back the bargaining rights of public employee unions:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/business/04labor.html

Hint: ALEC is way below the fold!

A Cautionary Note

What you’ll quickly learn even from reading these few documents is that ALEC is an organization that has been doing very important political work in the United States for the past forty years with remarkably little public or journalistic scrutiny. I’m posting this long note in the conviction that it’s time to start paying more attention. History is being made here, and future historians need people today to assemble the documents they’ll eventually need to write this story. Much more important, citizens today may wish to access these same documents to be well informed about important political decisions being made in our own time during the frequent meetings that ALEC organizes between Republican legislators and representatives of many of the wealthiest corporations in the United States.

I am well aware that every upholder of privilege, every hired agent or beneficiary of the special interests, including many well-meaning parlor reformers, will denounce all this as "Socialism" or "anarchy"--the same terms they used in the past in denouncing the movements to control the railways and to control public utilities. As a matter of fact, the propositions I make constitute neither anarchy nor Socialism, but, on the contrary, a corrective to Socialism and an antidote to anarchy.

[...] the Times has the entire transcript. It’s worth quoting at length:

Q: How do you think of your self as a conservative? Do you think of yourself more as a Goldwater conservative or Reagan conservative or George W. Bush conservative?

Senator John McCain: A Teddy Roosevelt conservative, I think. He’s probably my major role model…. I think Teddy Roosevelt he had a great vision of America’s role in the 20th Century. He was a great environmentalist. He loved the country. He is the person who brought the government into a more modern – into the 20th century as well. He was probably engaged more in national security slash international affairs that any president [had] ever been. I understand that TR had failings. I understand that every one of my role models had failings…..

[snip]

Q: Roosevelt wasn’t really a small government person. He saw an active role for government what thing in your record in your record would you say are in a similar vein of using government to do things that…

Mr. McCain: Campaign Finance reform – obviously he was a great reformer — is one of them. Climate change is another. He was a great environmentalist

Q: You don’t believe in small government, the sort of classic conservative view of minimal government is not one you would necessarily share.

Mr. McCain: …I also believe there is a role for government. If there is abuses, TR was the first guy to enforce the Sherman anti-trust act against the quote trusts that were controlling the economy of America. Because I believe his quote was unfettered capitalism leads to corruption. So there certainly is a role for government but I want to keep that role minimal. And I want to keep it in the areas where only governments can perform those functions.

Government should take care of those in America who can’t care for themselves. That’s a role of government. It’s not that I’m for no government. It’s that I’m for government carrying out those responsibilities that otherwise can’t be exercised by individuals and the states — that’s the founding principles of our country — and at the same time recognizing there’s a role for our government and society to care for those who can’t care for themselves, to make sure there are not abuses of individual rights as well as the rights of groups of people and to defend our nation. And National Security is obviously No. 1.

So I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold.

ADDENDUM, March 26th, 8:58 a.m., PST: Everyone and their dog has been blogging and tweeting about this, so a bazillion links, so I'll give few or none, but here is the NY Times editorial: "A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin."

Madison — In a stunning twist, Gov. Scott Walker's legislation limiting collective bargaining for public workers was published Friday despite a judge's hold on the measure, prompting a dispute over whether it takes effect Saturday.

The measure was published to the Legislature's website with a footnote that acknowledges the restraining order by a Dane County judge. But the posting says state law "requires the Legislative Reference Bureau to publish every act within 10 working days after its date of enactment."

The measure sparked protests at the Capitol and lawsuits by opponents because it would eliminate the ability of most public workers to bargain over anything but wages.

The restraining order was issued against Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette. But the bill was published by the reference bureau, which was not named in the restraining order.

Laws normally take effect a day after they are published, and a top GOP lawmaker said that meant it will become law Saturday. But nonpartisan legislative officials from two agencies, including the one who published the bill, disagreed. [....]

In response, Cronon has posted a lengthy rebuttal on his own web site. In the post, Cronon states that he has committed no wrongdoing in terms of the use of his state e-mail account -- and also saying that it would violate federal law to reveal e-mail conversations with students that have touched upon these subjects.

Comments

Sorry, Libya will have to wait for tomorrow or later this weekend. I have confidence it will still be being bombed by us and NATO, have no fear.

Also hoping to do a light science open thread post, but LJ filled the open thread post slot, yay!

Back more later in the weekend, I hope, but not tonight, I've gotta go. Play nicely, and please REMEMBER THE POSTING RULES.

Don't make me come hit anyone with a cluestick, okay? I'm a pacifist, mostly, as well as now a Pacificist.

And I'm really relieved that just a few hundred feet away is nuclear free zone, so it'd be illegal for me to get irradiated if I walk over there from my few hundred feet away in Oakland, where it would still be legal to nuclear bomb me.

And the science post could include this, but much more, but silly of me to promise when there's always new news every day. See ya later!

Also, I'm tweeting a bunch, if you want More Frequent Me. Plus Facebook. Just reminding you. Friend and follow me all you like!

Also, I notice with faint annoyance that CT doesn't believe in time-stamping posts, nor is there any indication what time-zone the time-stamps in the comments are. Not that it matters significantly; it's not as if I was tracking what minute who said what, anyway; it's just that the moment I see a reference to something being "the original" of something, as in regard to chronological sequence, the next thing I think of is "well, what time are we referring to?," but it's not worth further investigation, as It Doesn't Matter. Thanks for the link, LJ!

Right now I'm distracted by the fact that I lost my phone (the cheap one, not the new Android) while, I think, in the cab on the way to dinner, but the only record I have of which cab company I called is IN THE PHONE I lost, so now I've got to see if I figure out, somehow, which company that was, and if there's some way of getting my damn phone back.

Um, if you want to link to a comment, though, maybe you could link to the actual comment, rather than just link to the post, and refer to "in the comments"?; the comments all are permalinked, after all, under the number on the right of each comment.

Not sure what suggestion you're referring to, but I have to try to find what cab company I called and try to get my phone back rather more urgently than figure out what suggestion it is you have in mind. Maybe you mean Gene O'Grady 03.25.11 at 9:48 pm, #30? Where he wrote:

'the original suggestion' just means 'original to me'. I didn't want to suggest that I thought of it, so I just referred people to the thread, which also allowed me to link to the CT thread rather than just the comment, because it is by a colleague of Cronon's and it is where I got the who is Stephen Thompson link. Fascinating stuff.

Seeing that Brett is using the present tense, perhaps the problem is that he thinks McCarthy is still alive. Who'd a thunk it?

I think it is you that is groping around for a grammatical explanation to cover up the fact that 'McCarthy was notorious' is certainly clearer. However, if you went with that, it would kind of point to the hole in your observation.

Gary, your long-form posts are outstandingly informative, and carefully researched -- and for that very reason, they tend to end conversation on a topic instead of provoking it. There's very little to add or discuss when the basenote is a comprehensive overview with forty links and footnotes.

If you want to start a two-hundred-comment thread, post a short and witty one-link reference to one side of an arguable point, suggest one less-than-definitive line of evidence, and leave much of the evidence and most of the exposition for others to develop in the comment thread.

I agree with Donald Johnson that Balloon Juice is an inappropriate standard of comparison (unless you secretly wish for comment threads filled with pet advice and inside jokes).

I enjoy Balloon Juice, but the signal-to-noise ratio here is usually much higher.

Gee, I wonder what would happen if someone R'd TFA? The post likens Wisconsin Republicans to McCarthy because McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.

Why, it's almost as if the real basis for comparison was in the original post from the get-go, and SOMEONE is determined to be an incurious, mendacious and distracting ass.

Well, I guess the answer from me was: So what are they really doing to him? They asked for his emails, does he have something to hide?

Ah, the old, "What do you have to be afraid of? Huh? Huh?" I wonder what would happen if SOMEONE ELSE clicked over and read Cronon's blog posts on the topic where he makes clear what it is the Republicans are likely fishing for and are not going to find.

More important, WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO TO HIM? Take away his birthday? Turn him into a liberal martyr?

Probably the same thing they did to Shirley Sherrod and the president of NPR: Get him fired for nothing whatsoever.

The effect it would have on him specifically is to discredit him by dismissing him as a partisan. How that plays out in the media will influence his relationship with the university.
How it will effect the university is to remind them that they are a public institution subject to abuse by a political party that controls their funding.
How it will influence public employees of WI is to let them know that if they dare to speak against Republican policies they had better be "Caesars Wife", and even then it is going to be an extremely unpleasant experience for them.

It is just another step in the creation of a climate of fear that is essential to achieve the cheap labor goals of the Republican Party.

Historians are the most dangerous people in the world because they recognize the echo when they hear it. Then they try to warn us. Then they are accused of promoting what they are warning us against. Authoritarianism and the abuse of power that leads to destruction.
We have come very close to going over the edge several times in the past. I hope we wake up in time this time.

The post likens Wisconsin Republicans to McCarthy for... utilizing their state's FOIA to access public documents.

That's one way to read it, I suppose, but it's not the implication I was drawing, no.

Obviously, simply doing that is perfectly innocuous. If that's all you see, Brett, I don't think I shall bother attempting to explain further, since I already gave context.

Nell, I'd like to blog about Libya, but I've got a lot else going on in my life right now, and I'm also reading as much as I can, and I prefer to wait until I can say something worth saying, rather than rush in. I can report lots of news, but if you want commnetary, hey, I'd love to get a guest post from YOU ASAP. Shoot me one.

Bobbyp, I'm not keeping up on everything; please write as long a comment on Libya on either the open thread or the previous Libya thread. Or did you do that already?

I'm sorry that I haven't generated a Libya post, but I've got personal stuff going on today, and see above.

There's also plenty of other "action" taking place all over the world and nation, and if you're focused on just one thing, then, well, you're missing all the other stuff. There's also not a crying need to address the stuff everyone else is talking about, which maybe is what I did with Professor Cronon, since I didn't realize everyone else on the internets would be writing about him.

But neither do I want to rush in and simply say something simpleminded about Libya, and mostly I just can't do it this afternoon, and probably not today, and we'll just have to see. I'm sorry if this is unsatisfactory. How about you give us your six most interesting links you've read on "the action" about Libya? Then we could all read up on what you think the most worthwhile commentary is.

Or three would do. Or one.

Nothing like lefties pointing fingers at each other to generate heat.

Sorry, I'm not following what you're saying here. Which lefties are pointing fingers at each other where about what?

His emails are public record, liberals go fishing in open records requests all the time, so what.

Perhaps you could come up with some analogous examples of such fishing. Cronon is a public employee, but not a government officeholder, elected or otherwise. There there is no evidence of wrongdoing on his part, no involvement in public policy-making or government administration. So where are your examples? And BTW, why would such examples justify this particular intrusion?

More important, WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO TO HIM? Take away his birthday? Turn him into a liberal martyr?

I couldn't figure out from your post how they were going to create any harm to him.

Harm to Cronon is only part of the picture. The request serves to tell all University employees, including those unprotected by tenure, that if they publish material critical of Walker they will have their email pawed through by these a**holes. The fundamental message is that the WI GOP is going to punish its critics however it can.

The effect it would have on him specifically is to discredit him by dismissing him as a partisan. How that plays out in the media will influence his relationship with the university.

In this case, he is a partisan. He wrote an op-ed. It was an opinion, taking a side. So it is not unexpected, if perhaps unreasonable that someone might object.

How it will effect the university is to remind them that they are a public institution subject to abuse by a political party that controls their funding.

How it will influence public employees of WI is to let them know that if they dare to speak against Republican policies they had better be "Caesars Wife", and even then it is going to be an extremely unpleasant experience for them..

This is why I strongly support the concept of tenure at the university level. It is also not really much of a threat.

It is just another step in the creation of a climate of fear that is essential to achieve the cheap labor goals of the Republican Party.

This I just don't accept. Unless FOIA is just for liberals. Despite earlier guffawing, if he didn't misuse public resources then there is little to no reason to be intimidated. I don't suspect from reading his bio or his blog he is very intimidated, nor is the university.

Historians are the most dangerous people in the world because they recognize the echo when they hear it. Then they try to warn us. Then they are accused of promoting what they are warning us against. Authoritarianism and the abuse of power that leads to destruction.
We have come very close to going over the edge several times in the past. I hope we wake up in time this time.

Okay, yes, I'm familiar in general with what many people are saying. Hundreds, actually, given all the tweets, and various columnists and numerous blogs, and on and on. Everyone has an opinion. I thought you might have some specific pieces you have thought particularly insightful.

But that's okay. It's why I'm blogging, and you're not. :-)

Except please forgive me; I'm having a Very Bad Physical Pain Day today. So far, and compounded. Hydrocodone not helping much. So far.

Writing an op-ed indicates that you have an opinion. Not the same as being partisan.

Somewhere in this great land of ours is a faithful handful of conservative Republicans who think it's total BS that folks holding a position in the Republican party are demanding Cronon's emails under the WI Open Records Law. Of whose party are they the partisans?

Taking a side in a discussion because that is where the facts and your convictions lead you is not the same thing as being partisan.

Why do the Republicans want Cronon's emails?

Because they hope to find that he has misused his academic email account for political activity that falls outside of what's allowed.

That will, potentially, let them try to get him fired. Tenure might not be enough to preserve his job in that case, because he will actually have violated an explicit university policy.

It will also let them portray universities as hotbeds of liberal activism, funded by your and my hard-earned honest dollars. It's a perennial favorite.

But I agree that Cronon appears to have quite a bit more sand than the average Republican rat-f***ee. I don't think he's likely to just roll over and take it.

Then the solution is simple. All public employees emails should be made public...perhaps the minute they hit 'send'. After all, it is the right that argues there is no such thing as a 'right' to privacy.

Lets say, as you stipulated, why do THESE Republicans want his emails.

Second, this generalization

But I agree that Cronon appears to have quite a bit more sand than the average Republican rat-f***ee.

is quite unnecessary.

Third, this was certainly a partisan op-ed, in language and intent.

Fourth, I can write a beautiful bio of the Koch brothers accomplishments, civic deeds, educational background and charitable donations and it would make them no less partisan.

So I don't care if this guy walks on water in his spare time, he wrote a liberal, partisan op-ed and entered the political fray. So acting like he is exempt from being questioned on his ethics while participating is bs.

If he is the saint as depicted, the light shone on his behavior should illuminate that point.

Yup. Anyone who dares to write an oped from a liberal prespective should expect to be subjected to a formal investigation and its their own damn fault for daring to express a liberal thought in public.

So I don't care if this guy walks on water in his spare time, he wrote a liberal, partisan op-ed and entered the political fray. So acting like he is exempt from being questioned on his ethics while participating is bs.

Someone called Marty used to post conservative, partisan comments here, thus entering the political fray. So by CCDG's logic, Marty's ethics -- like whether Marty ever posted ObWi comments from his employer's computer -- are open to question.

I don't think Marty's employer was any branch of government, so a FOIA request would not apply. That's lucky for Marty, since otherwise CCDG would be all over his sorry ass.

"Someone called Marty used to post conservative, partisan comments here, thus entering the political fray."

I would suggest that Marty's anonymous obviously unauthoritative opinions in the comments section on a blog, even one as widely read as Obwi, are not equivalent to an attributed op-ed piece as an expert in the NYT. But I could be wrong.

What Joel said. For me, Gary, it's hard to comment on a topic that requires me to read so much material or suffer from the inevitable "didn't you read the above?" criticism. It chills discussion. There is a balance, and, IMHO, the length of your posts and the amount of links you provide go over it.

Also, there are at least three distinct lines of thought in the post: The Cronon FOIA issue, ALEC, and TR. Not to mention the "lawless R's" final parting comment.

Plus, I like more original thought from posters. More distillation.

And finally, ObWi still needs more balance. Been saying that for a while. What, don't you guys have conservative friends?

What was Cronon's offense? He wrote an Op-Ed piece for the terrorist-loving New York Times.

Well, yes, the NYT is terrorist-loving, but that couldn't have been his offense since the Op-Ed came was March 22nd and the records request was March 17th. Cronon himself thinks it is just intimidation in response to his blog post about ALEC.

Other thoughts: Cronon on his own web page states he doesn't have all the answers. He hoped putting it "out there" would shine more light on ALEC. He doesn't have anything definitive to tie ALEC to the Wisconsin legislation. Which, IMHO, is contrary to his headline.

He seems to cast aspersions on ALEC (which may be warranted; I don't know) by associating them with such nefarious organizations as CATO, but then admits the connections are not clear.

And where is ALEC's model "union busting" language? I was thinking that must be out there somewhere given the headline. Instead, Cronon notes you cannot see ALEC's model bills without being a member. So how does he know that ALEC drafted the Wisconsin legislation? He doesn't. Hence the title: "Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn’t Start Here)." To which I say: Hint: if you really don't know but only suspect and you're a really smart almost-Pulitzer Prize winning scholar, you should probably say Who MIGHT be behind . . ."

I find it interesting that he notes how "open" the records request really was: Stephan Thompson didn't try to hide his Republican Party affiliation! Why is that surprising? Why would the Republicans try to hide their association with the request?

OTOH, I question going after an academic, even one that is clearly to the left of what he claims to be, with such a full FOIA request. Unless they know there is something there, it seems to come close to the line.

Collective bargaining law published despite court order blocking it.

This is quite the intriguing development. How lawless will the Wisconsin Republican Party become?

Yes, nothing like trying to actually enforce a bill passed by a majority while the minority left the state to, er, act lawfully.

However, without reading the text of the judge's opinion, I would think the "no implementation" language would have covered any further action. Seeking to implement the law with a TRO out there is a bit much.

CCDG: I would suggest that Marty's anonymous obviously unauthoritative opinions in the comments section on a blog, even one as widely read as Obwi, are not equivalent to an attributed op-ed piece as an expert in the NYT. But I could be wrong.

So, let me get this straight: Professor Cronon is fair game for publishing signed, authoritative opinions? And "Marty" is not fair game because he was just some pseudonymous doofus, babbling to a much smaller audience? Is that the proposition?

I would not mind if it is, actually. I always thought Marty's opinions were incoherent foolishness, more embarrassing to the author than persuasive to the reader. Cronon's opinions are quite the opposite, CCDG seems to imply: too coherent and persuasive to be met with mere counterargument; hence justifiably open to ad hominem rebuttal, e.g. by FOIA access to his emails.

I cannot bring myself to stoop as low as CCDG seems prepared to go when it comes to ad hominem forms of combat in the arena of argument. At least, I don't care whether Marty ever used company time or company facilities to post his "anonymous, obviously unauthoritative opinions" in comments here. But I suppose it's possible that I might have tried to impugn Marty's integrity along those lines, had his opinions ever seemed worth such desperate measures. Had I feared the power of Marty's opinions, as the Republican scum seem to fear Cronon's, then (who knows?) I might have succumbed to the temptation that CCDG seems determined to excuse.

CCDG and Marty both must have missed one of the favorite pastimes of conservative bloggers during the Bush years, which was investigating and "outing" pseudonymous liberal bloggers, then trying to get them fired.

"Fair's fair'; if he was employed in the private sector, you couldn't do anything, NOR SHOULD YOU. Same rules should apply."

If he was employed in the private sector, his employer could do worse. The theory behind FOIA, in part, is that the public ARE the employers of government employees, and entitled to know what they're up to during work hours. Just as my own employer can look at my corporate email anytime he wants, rifle through my desk, and so on. FOIA is actually LESS intrusive, in that he could keep purely private emails from being released.

"Hey, isn't there a certain "Althouse" character in Madison, on the faculty or something?

Perhaps her emails should be FOIA'd. It could be interesting, if only to discover where she gets all the box wine."

Here are a few simple question for CCDG or anyone else who thinks it's silly for people to be bothered by the FOIA-based investigation of Cronon's e-mails:

Do you think it's a form of intimidation or not? If not, do you think it's justified, and on what basis? What specific need is there for opening up this particular guy's e-mail to public scrutiny right now?

With respect to FOIA on Cronon's emails (Private Manning), I have actually asked the WI Republican Party (Pentagon) whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of FOIA request (his confinement) are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are. I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Cronon's academic non-partisan objectivity (Private Manning’s safety) as well.

Bold are mine and in parenthesis is Obama's.
Thebewilderness comment leads to the same tactics and purposes, just as GOP's tactics lead to McCarthy's tactics.

About the difference of 'liberal' and 'conservative' request for emails: Several GOP governors recently claimed that they receive tons of emails of support for their policy of union-busting, tax breaks for the upper income levels/corporations etc. but were not very willing to show proof for those claims. So, the 'liberal' requests for those emails were quite specific, not just a fishing expedition. And it turned out, to no one's surprise I would say, that the claims were either completely false (5:1 against is not a majority for) or highly misleading (support emails overwhelmingly came from out of state).
If a Dem public official had made similar claims, a 'conservative' request for proof would have been equally justified. On the other hand, if a 'liberal' entity would demand all the correspondence of a professor they don't like with the obvious intent to seek for dirt (or what could pass for dirt in the right light) in order to silence him/her, such behaviour should be condemned.

I forgot to include: the governor of Maine claimed numerous complaints about the mural in the labor department but refused to show proof. He constantly changed the story (it was letters, faxes, emails...) and in the end could offer only a single handwritten letter that iirc was dated after his announcement that he would remove the 'offending' artwork.

Gary
I hope you do not think of me as paranoid anymore since Cronon also wrote about "concerted and well organised GOP efforts towards GOP permanent rule" implemented by true believers. Since i came to this conclusion trough similarities of pre-war Croatia to the US situation you accused me of being paranoid that it will lead to the same outcome: civil war. Political division is complete, true believers can not be persuaded with no amount of facts and logic and they can see the winnings at the end of the tunnel. Only pointing to the historical outcomes, given enough time before next economic crash, might, just might prevent the bad outcome.

Tom Delay came right out and said that the Republicans were trying to create a one party state. Of course he got jailed for his contributions toward that goal but Rove, Norquist, the Koch bothers, indeed the entire leadership of the Republican party elected or otherwise, keep on with their efforts through intimidation of individuals, hate talk shows, voter supression, coordinated ALEC proposals, jerrymandering, the buying of politicians,consolidation of the media in corporate hands... with the support of voters who are receptive to divide and conquer messages or responsive in a positive way to the selfishess which is the heart of the Republican message.

Of course one of the elements necessary for their success is their dependence upon the willingess of their voters to refuse to connect dots so long as they percieve the Republicans as screwing over someone other than themselves.

SO from that perspective it makes sense to launch an investigation, even if there is no reason for thinking a crime or misbehavior has occured, against a man who has scholarly expertise and who, based of his expertise, expressed his thoughts in a op ed. To create a one party state people not of that party must be made to feel that they risk being harassed for their thoughts.

From that perspective it slao makes sense for a individual who wishes to justify supportig Republicans to pretend that there is nothing wrong with launching an investigation against someone without the least evidence that malfeasance has ocuured based only on the pulbic expression of a thought that a Republcian governor didn't like. Define the public expression of a non-Republican thought as grounds for investigation! And pretend that there is no intent to intimidate! Redefine civil discourse on ideas to mean that if you speak up in pulblic you can expect to be investigated! make that the new normal for liberals! But no it has nothing to do with intimidation.SHeesh.

This isn't just word games. There is a real person out there who is the target of itimidation. And of course the real message is to any other college professor or expert in any field who might dare to pubically express a non-Repulican thought.

All that being stipulated, two years ago when the political wisdom was there was going to be a permanent Democratic majority, no one here complained.

Every candidate in the Republican party was George Bush, even today that is tired but tried in every election by the Democrats. There is no shortage of people on the left searching for things to catch those right wingers on, and most is as innocuous as this.

But sometimes they catch a Tom Delay.

It gets harder for everyone to separate the politics from any policy, on both sides. The op-ed we are talking about wasn't exactly a measured policy piece.

All that being stipulated, two years ago when the political wisdom was there was going to be a permanent Democratic majority, no one here complained.

That was a matter of opinion based on the (wrongly) perceived general political environment, not an intimidation scheme intended to undermine open discourse. It's not remotely the same thing. (Of course, democrats want democrats to win. It's a matter of how they go about the winning.)

Every candidate in the Republican party was George Bush, even today that is tired but tried in every election by the Democrats.

I'd like to see you demonstrate the truth of this, but, even if you could, it's again not the same thing. Poor arguments aren't intimidation schemes targeting individual citizens for expressing the "wrong" opinions.

There is no shortage of people on the left searching for things to catch those right wingers on, and most is as innocuous as this.

But sometimes they catch a Tom Delay.

But Tom Delay did things that deserved investigation. I don't think investigations are a categorical problem. It's a matter of their being justified or not. Clearly, the investigation of Tom Delay's activities were justified. The good professor's, not so much.

The op-ed we are talking about wasn't exactly a measured policy piece.

So what? You've already admitted that using the FOIA to search through this guy's e-mails was unjustified, so what's the point of characterizing the op-ed this way?

This was absolutely intimidation, if any candidate agreed with any policy George Bush ever agreed with they were abused with the label and knew they couldn't win.

Every middle of the road conservative headed for the hills and all that were left were what we have today, those that were willing to fight against the brutal constant drumbeat of the late Bush years. Even Bush conceded his last eighteen months to the vindictive left who found an antichrist to constantly burn in effigy.

Obama rode that intimidation to a majority and then proved he didn't believe it by half.

What the...? A politician being criticized for supporting the policies of an unpopular president of the same party is "intimidation"? And it's somehow equivalent to opening investigations of people for expressing opinions that the party in power doesn't like?

some kind of attempt by ObWi to shut out conservative voices is not among them

WrS. Von, myself, and Sebastian still have posting privileges, and can post whenever and whatever we please, until such time as the hivemind experiences some sort of autoimmune expulsion of the offending elements.

Which has not happened, I shouldn't have to add.

But I think it's not a bad idea to have conservatives who actually have something to write about, and the time and willingness to post.

This was absolutely intimidation, if any candidate agreed with any policy George Bush ever agreed with they were abused with the label and knew they couldn't win.

I just knew this was coming. So, let's allow for the idea that attacking campaign opponents for their positions and associating them with an unpopular president are forms of intimidation. Fine (even if you've grossly overstated the use and effectiveness of these tactics). They're still nothing like opening a professor's e-mails up to public scrutiny because he wrote an op-ed.

Politicians and their supporters say mean things about their opponents during elections. Whoopie! They might even constitute bad arguments. Heavens!

For something analogous in the case of the professor's op-ed, you might, I don't know, write your own op-ed refuting what the professor wrote. Something like that. That would be like politicians saying mean things about each other during elections.

Unnecessarily opening up the guy's e-mails is a very different animal. What legitimate purpose does it serve? How is it an appropriate response to what he wrote in the op-ed? How is it like the ugly but normal, expected and long-standing practice of unfairly attacking one's political opponents in whatever convenient way is available at the time during an election? How is it at all the same kind of intimidation?

even if you've grossly overstated the use and effectiveness of these tactics

In general I would agree with this, not in this case. It was hitting every Republican object with a huge object, covered with spikes that drew blood as hard and as often as possible with no possible defense. Heck, it made McCain pick Palin.

I believe it shaped the reactionary nature of the Republican Party for at least another two election cycles.

I agree that the personal intimidation of Cronon is reprehensible, and that it's par for the course for Republicans, who routinely stop at nothing in their attempts to personally intimidate people. This has long been a political technique of theirs (Nixon's dirty tricks, the Bill Clinton witch hunt, Karl Rove's raison d'etre - easy to list them on the Republican side; hard to think of them on the Democratic side), but very much more disturbing to see them using these techniques against private citizens.

But slightly off-point, I think there are parallels between "outing" the emails of a professor, and the Wikileaks phenomenon. Both involve disclosing communications of people who did not intend for their communications to be made public. There are good reasons sometimes (investigating legitimate accusations of civil or criminal wrongdoing, for example) to examine communications made by people who work for government organizations, but people who make careless or malign decisions to make semi-private communications public can cause hardship. That's true both in this case and Wikileaks.

I would suggest that Marty's anonymous obviously unauthoritative opinions in the comments section on a blog, even one as widely read as Obwi, are not equivalent to an attributed op-ed piece as an expert in the NYT. But I could be wrong.

The only thing that I know he's been accused of is doing partisan political work from university computer accounts. I don't think there's a qualifier for anonymity or number of eyeballs/standing of the forum where the statements are made.
I think that anyone, liberal or conservative, ought to follow those laws. But I don't think anyone, liberal or conservative, should be subject to a fishing expedition based on their political views or private political activity just to check if they might have violated those rules.
Also, these are not public records, any more than his private HR file or his discussions with other faculty members about students etc. I think any comparison between a FOIA of eg a meeting that should've been on the record but was not, and this, is both inaccurate and fueled by an intentional equivocation using the term "public record".

Let's consider the potential effect here- any public employee could see their emails and work records FOIAed and searched for either potential violations or just interesting tidbits. Public employees would then either have to be scrupulous, not just avoid recording illegal actions (which is good) but anything even potentially damanging to their families, careers, etc (criticizing colleagues or the university, having an affair, expressing normal job frustrations, being in the closet, having non-mainstream political/social/etc opinions, embarrasing revelations from their youth, etc).
Many people probably would be embarrased if every email they wrote ended up in public, so the only way out for public employees would be 1)don't attract attention or 2)make a habit of not using your university email account for *anything*.

If he was employed in the private sector, his employer could do worse. The theory behind FOIA, in part, is that the public ARE the employers of government employees, and entitled to know what they're up to during work hours.

Im not at all sure that this is the theory behind FOIA, that we ought to be able to pry into the employment records of the Capital janitorial force.

Just as my own employer can look at my corporate email anytime he wants, rifle through my desk, and so on. FOIA is actually LESS intrusive, in that he could keep purely private emails from being released.

His employer is the university. They can presumably rifle through his desk and look at his emails. I think this is another mistaken equivocation- in one sense he is employed by the public, but not in the sense that "the public" gets to do his performance review via FOIA or "the public" ought to have the power to sit in on his classes and offer constructive criticism.

In general I would agree with this, not in this case. It was hitting every Republican object with a huge object, covered with spikes that drew blood as hard and as often as possible with no possible defense.

I think this is too much a stretch for comparison. On the one hand, we have politicians running for office, who are expected to deal with all manner of true and false allegations, innuendos, etc. On the other hand we have a private citizen who happens to work for the state expressing a political opinion.
And even with that stretched comparison, if a university professor were running for office Id not support a fishing expedition into all of their university emails looking for something to smear them with.

people who make careless or malign decisions to make semi-private communications public can cause hardship. That's true both in this case and Wikileaks.

Interesting comparison. And, I think, probably accurate insofar as I understand the wikileaks motivating principle to cause problems for overly-secret organizations (and the Wisconsin GOP's motivation to cause problems for people who advocate for liberal causes).
One obvious difference is the nature of the two targets, but I think another one is the nature of the information itself. ie if the US government is hiding something that we would not only like to know but *ought* to know, then attacking that system of classification seems to be a better thing than harassing someone for their political opinions via info that we ought not have access to (at least from my understanding of personal privacy).

But still, interesting comparison, I hadnt seen that & it's food for thought.

CCDG and Marty both must have missed one of the favorite pastimes of conservative bloggers during the Bush years, which was investigating and "outing" pseudonymous liberal bloggers, then trying to get them fired.

The privacy concern is legitimate. So is the concern with "fishing expedition" investigations into someone you disagree with. Politico (and Slarti, I am really trying to understand how to insert a link) at this address: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51949.html (which when I attempted to add it as a link simply caused the balance of my comment to disappear from the 'edit' screen) alleges that Media Matters is doing oppo research on Fox News mid level people as a means of attacking them, their network and presumably their message. If true, this is at least as awful, if not considerably more so, than a FOIA request on a public employee, regardless of motives. If the cost of expressing an opinion is having others sift through your private life and expose human frailty, then the line has well and truly been crossed.

Sapient, do I misremember: didn't the Clinton Administration have a rather muscular oppo research program? Didn't someone affiliated with the Democratic party unearth the details of GWB's DUI arrest and plant it just prior to the 2000 election? A more balanced view is that dirt-digging is a reprehensible, bipartisan activity.

McTex, from your cite:Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Media Matters last month also issued a report criticizing “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy’s criticism of this reporter’s blog.)

How I feel about this depends on what they mean by oppo research. If they mean collecting quotes etc and comparing to actions, or collecting quotes about motivation, I think that's a reasonable thing- eg Ive seen emails from FOX editors suggesting how they should slant their news coverage. That seems like fair game & newsworthy in and of itself (as well as speaking to their credibility as a news org). Sifting through the personal lives of reporters or editors would be foul play IMO.
But I wouldn't want to condemn this until I understood exactly what was meant by it.

If the cost of expressing an opinion is having others sift through your private life and expose human frailty, then the line has well and truly been crossed.

Hear hear. It's bad enough that we feel it compulsory to dig into the private lives of our actual politicians- when the price of having a political opinion is being targeted for an invasion of personal privacy, we're in a bad place.

It depends on the dirt. An arrest is something that people disclose on many job applications (certainly every government application I've seen), and GWB was applying (running) for a government job.

Sapient, it's a rare instance that can't be distinguished in some form or fashion. There is relevant dirt and irrelevant dirt. A timed disclosure of irrelevant dirt is of the same ilk as what is being complained about here. It's all dirty pool. All of it. Parsing details to excuse one side while damning the other simply gives both sides the fig leaf of justification for the inevitable next round.

The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes.

Normally I'm fine with litigation. But, I've seen companies who use it as a form of punishment/revenge/intimidation etc. David Brock was a smear artist when he was on the conservative side of things. I doubt the leopard has changed his spots.

Sapient, it's a rare instance that can't be distinguished in some form or fashion. There is relevant dirt and irrelevant dirt. A timed disclosure of irrelevant dirt is of the same ilk as what is being complained about here.

It's true that just bc a line can be drawn between two examples doesn't mean they're different, but it doesn't mean they're the same, either. Im not a big fan of the probing of the personal life of politicians, but it is the norm & I wouldn't call it dirty pool to ask Newt about his divorces or Edwards about his infidelity. Id prefer not to live in that world, but the fact that we do doesn't excuse going after private citizens for expressing political opinions.
So Id say that GWB's DWI is no less irrelevant than many other personal details that we ordinarily demand from politicians and accept as part of the political process. Whether that ought to be the case isn't IMO on target in asking whether a private citizen has been treated fairly.
And, as someone pointed out above, you can hardly get a job as a teacher or dogcatcher without revealing past convictions.

Normally I'm fine with litigation. But, I've seen companies who use it as a form of punishment/revenge/intimidation etc.

Usually against people for whom the burden of showing up in court or hiring a lawyer is prohibitive. Doesn't work that way against wealthy multinationals Ill expect. More likely they want to tarish the FOX brand by revealing ugly stories or hope to find something via discovery.
The latter Im not a fan of either- I would like to see judges use more, er, judgment in figuring out when discovery is justified and when it's fishing. otoh, in political matters like this, judges are IMO more likely to use their political judgment than their legal one in determining what's appropriate. (Or at least, those are the stories that make the news, so it might be unfair to judge judges by that evidence).

"Remember when conservative bloggers outed a bunch of pseudonymous liberal bloggers and commenters, then contacted their employers to try to have them fired? And remember when Andrew Breitbart and his cabal got Shirley Sherrod fired? And remember when Jamie O'Keefe got the president of NPR to submit her resignation? Well CONSERVATIVES ARE THE REAL VICTIMS HERE!!!!!!1111ONE!!!!"

Yes, that's exactly what I said. But again, perhaps inadvertently, you make a point worth addressing: O'Keefe and NPR. I think scamming people is slimy and I don't care for it. However, I don't recall you being upset when Scott Walker got scammed in a similar way. So, again, I think you're making my point.

I wouldn't call it dirty pool to ask Newt about his divorces or Edwards about his infidelity.

I wouldn't either, particularly Newt, because he's put his character in issue by running. Ditto for Edwards if he was ever stupid enough to run for office again. However, this is not comparable to GWB in 2000. Whatever else one might say unkindly about GWB, he was fairly clear that his past was not perfect, that he'd made his share of mistakes, etc. The DUI was quite old--I don't recall the exact number--and it was unearthed and intentionally dropped in October by a Democrat, not because it was relevant to any current issue, but to affect the outcome of the election. That was low, as low as anything being complained of here.

CW, there's plenty of it going around. It's all pretty nauseating. BTW--I was comparing dropping irrelevant outdated information at a time intending to affect a national election with using FOIA to access emails of a public employee.